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Sources Say U.S. Intelligence Agencies Tasked Foreign Partners with Spying on Trump’s 2016 Campaign


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | FEBRUARY 14, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/14/sources-say-u-s-intelligence-agencies-tasked-foreign-partners-with-spying-on-trumps-2016-campaign/

Donald Trump in 2016

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The U.S. Intelligence Community asked fellow members of the “‘Five Eyes’ intelligence alliance to surveil Trump’s associates and share the intelligence they acquired with US agencies,” sources told a small team of independent reporters who broke the story yesterday. 

In “CIA Had Foreign Allies Spy on Trump Team, Triggering Russia Collusion Hoax, Sources Say,” journalists Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag reported that top-line takeaway, along with several other key details. According to the authors, “multiple credible sources,” said that “the United States Intelligence Community (IC), including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), illegally mobilized foreign intelligence agencies to target Trump advisors long before the summer of 2016.” 

The article, published on Shellenberger’s Substack, noted, “Until now, the official story has been that the FBI’s investigation began after Australian intelligence officials told US officials that a Trump aide had boasted to an Australian diplomat that Russia had damning material about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.” That probe, dubbed Crossfire Hurricane, launched on July 31, 2016, although Special Counsel John Durham would later conclude the Australian tip failed to justify the investigation into the Trump campaign. 

Spying on Trump

However, British intelligence sources began targeting Trump on behalf of American intelligence agencies possibly as early as 2015, according to Tuesday’s blockbuster article. Several outlets had previously reported that the British Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, had discovered “alleged ties between Trump and the Russian government.”

According to the British-based Guardian, “a source close to UK intelligence” claimed, “GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious ‘interactions’ between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents.” Yet the Guardian reported:

GCHQ was at no point carrying out a targeted operation against Trump or his team or proactively seeking information. The alleged conversations were picked up by chance as part of routine surveillance of Russian intelligence assets. Over several months, different agencies targeting the same people began to see a pattern of connections that were flagged to intelligence officials in the US.

Not so, according to Shellenberger, Taibbi, and Gutentag’s sources, who were familiar with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s investigation. “In truth, the US IC asked the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence alliance to surveil Trump’s associates and share the intelligence they acquired with US agencies,” the journalists reported their sources as saying, with the Five Eyes nations being the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.

Sources also claimed, according to Tuesday’s article, that “President Barack Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, had identified 26 Trump associates for the Five Eyes to target.” According to the journalists, a source confirmed the IC had “identified [those associates] as people to ‘bump,’ or make contact with or manipulate,” and claimed the individuals were “targets of our own IC and law enforcement — targets for collection and misinformation.”

A source close to the investigation reportedly told the team of journalists that “[t]hey were making contacts and bumping Trump people going back to March 2016,” and “sending people around the UK, Australia, Italy — the Mossad in Italy. The MI6 was working at an intelligence school they had set up.”

Shellenberger, Taibbi, and Gutentag further reported their sources’ claim that “[u]nknown details about the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign and raw intelligence related to the IC’s surveillance of the Trump campaign are in a 10-inch binder that Trump ordered to be declassified at the very end of his term.” The three journalists stressed that this new information “is supported by testimony already in the public record.” In fact, much of the article confirms theories developed from the evidence gleaned over the years.

Years of Evidence

For instance, in “All The Russia Collusion Clues Are Beginning To Point Back To John Brennan,” I highlighted Brennan’s testimony to the House Intelligence Committee in May 2017 that he had “encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about.” Brennan told the committee back then that he didn’t know whether there was collusion with Russia, but that he passed the information on to the FBI. As I wrote at the time:

The evidence suggests, however, that Brennan’s CIA and the intelligence community did much more than merely pass on details about ‘contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign’ to the FBI. The evidence suggests that the CIA and intelligence community — including potentially the intelligence communities of the UK, Italy, and Australia — created the contacts and interactions that they then reported to the FBI as suspicious.

The known entities of this apparent conspiracy included Stefan Halper, an American confidential human source (CHS) informant for the FBI who, as I wrote at The Federalist, “worked at Cambridge University alongside Sir Richard Dearlove, the former director of the British intelligence service MI6, and Christopher Andrew, the official historian for the British counterintelligence group MI5.” 

It has long been known that Halper reached out to several members of the Trump campaign as a CHS for the Crossfire Hurricane team. But Halper’s efforts to ingratiate himself began before the official launch on July 31, 2016. In mid-July 2016, Halper approached Carter Page at a conference at Cambridge. American Steven Schrage, who organized that conference, detailed the happenings in the article “The Spies Who Hijacked America.” 

As Schrage told it, “For most of the conference, Halper couldn’t be bothered with Page, about whom he made snarky comments about behind Page’s back.” But that changed after Dearlove arrived at the conference and spoke with Halper. Halper then “seemed desperately interested in isolating, cornering, and ingratiating himself to Page and promoting himself to the Trump campaign,” Schrage wrote.

While Halper’s outreach to Page came only a couple of weeks before the launch of Crossfire Hurricane, the apparent targeting of Trump campaign volunteer George Papadopoulos first occurred in March 2016. Open-source material reveals that “on March 14, 2016, George met London-based college Professor Joseph Mifsud while traveling in Italy.” At the time, “Mifsud, then director of the London Academy of Diplomacy, claimed connections to the Russian Government.”

According to Papadopoulos, he had traveled to Italy, specifically Rome, at the encouragement of “a woman in London, who was the FBI’s legal attaché in the U.K.” That initial meeting of Mifsud led to several more, including the fateful one where Mifsud supposedly told Papadopoulos that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton — the conversation the FBI claimed justified the launching of Crossfire Hurricane.

As has been detailed at length, most comprehensively by Lee Smith at RealClearInvestigations, Mifsud has numerous connections to Western intelligence services and has taught at the Link Campus University in Rome, a university whose “lecturers and professors include senior Western diplomats and intelligence officials from a number of NATO countries, especially Italy and the United Kingdom.”

Confirming Theories

These details closely match the information that sources revealed to Shellenberger, Taibbi, and Gutentag. And should the raw intelligence reports exist, as those sources claim, there will be concrete confirmation that foreign intelligence services targeted the Trump campaign, which in turn will confirm many of the theories posited about the real start of the Russia-collusion hoax.

It seems unlikely there will be anything in writing to establish John Brennan or another member of the U.S. Intelligence Community solicited assistance from the other members of Five Eyes. Nonetheless, Americans deserve to know what was in that 10-inch binder and which foreign intelligence services interfered in our 2016 election by “bumping” members of the Trump campaign to craft the Russia hoax. 

The now-known significance of that binder also raises the specter that the search of Mar-a-Lago wasn’t to protect classified materials but to protect intelligence agencies — American and foreign. 

Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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The Russia Hoax Orbiting Hunter Biden’s Laptop Is So Much Bigger Than Blinken


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | APRIL 27, 2023

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/27/the-russia-hoax-orbiting-hunter-bidens-laptop-is-so-much-bigger-than-blinken/

Antony Blinken stands in front of flags
While Blinken provides an entry point to unraveling the Russian-disinformation hoax, there is much more to learn.

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MARGOT CLEVELAND

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Antony Blinken represents neither the beginning nor the end of the info ops run to convince voters the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. Revisiting the contemporaneous coverage of the laptop story in light of last week’s revelations about Blinken reveals the scandal extends far beyond the Biden campaign and involves government agents. 

Last week, news broke that a former top CIA official, Michael Morell, testified as part of a House Judiciary Committee investigation that Blinken, now-secretary of state and then-Biden campaign senior adviser, had contacted Morell to discuss the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story.

Blinken and Morell reportedly “discussed possible Russian involvement in the spreading of information related to Hunter Biden.” According to Morell, Blinken’s outreach “set in motion” what led to the public statement signed by 51 former intelligence agents that falsely framed the laptop as Russian disinformation.

This revelation is huge — but it’s only a start to understanding the scope of the plot to interfere in the 2020 election by framing the laptop exposing Biden family corruption as foreign disinformation.

The First Clue

The first hint that Blinken’s outreach to Morell was a single spoke in the wheel of the Biden campaign’s deception came from a follow-up email Blinken sent Morell on Oct. 17, 2020. In it, Blinken shared a USA Today article that reported “the FBI was examining whether the Hunter Biden laptop was part of a ‘disinformation campaign.’” The very bottom of Blinken’s email contained the signature block of Andrew Bates, then a Biden campaign spokesman and the director of his “rapid response” team, suggesting Bates had sent the article to Blinken for him to forward to Morell.

Blinken forwarding an article claiming the FBI was investigating the laptop as a potential “disinformation campaign” is hugely significant because we know the FBI was doing no such thing. The FBI knew both that the laptop was authentic and that John Paul Mac Isaac had possession of the hard drive, just as the New York Post had reported, albeit without identifying the computer-store owner by name. 

The USA Today article nonetheless furthered the narrative that Morell and the other former intelligence officials would soon parrot in their “Public Statement on the Hunter Biden Emails” — that the emails have “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

For those who lived through the Russia-collusion hoax, it was the USA Today article and the presidential campaign’s use of Russia to deflect attention from the Biden scandal that bore the “classic earmarks” of an information operation — one that mimicked Hillary Clinton’s ploy four years prior. Given the similarities between the two Russia hoaxes, it seemed likely the Biden campaign worked with the press to push the Russian-disinformation narrative. 

USA Today Didn’t Start the Falsehood 

Sure enough, the legacy press began pushing the narrative days before Blinken emailed Morell the article on Oct. 17.

On Oct. 14, 2020, the same day the New York Post broke the first laptop story, Politico ran an article, co-authored by Russia-hoaxer extraordinaire “Fusion Natasha” Bertrand, raising questions about the authenticity of said laptop. “This is a Russian disinformation operation. I’m very comfortable saying that,” Bertrand quoted former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Biden adviser Michael Carpenter.

At the time, Carpenter also ran the Penn Biden Center — the same place a cache of classified documents from Biden’s time as vice president and senator were discovered in a closet.

Politico also quoted Bates, whose signature block would later appear on Blinken’s email to Morell. Bates spun the scandal as one about Rudy Giuliani, who had provided a copy of the hard drive to the Post, and Giuliani’s supposed connection “to Russian intelligence.” 

Intel Community Helped Peddle Russia Hoax 2.0

As was the case with the Russia-collusion hoax, the Biden campaign received an assist from the intelligence community. On Oct. 14, 2020, The New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence analysts “had picked up Russian chatter that stolen Burisma emails” would be released as an “October surprise.” 

Burisma, of course, was the Ukrainian energy company that paid Hunter Biden nearly $1 million to sit on its board during his father’s final year as vice president. 

The chief concern of the intelligence analysts, the Times reported, “was that the Burisma material would be leaked alongside forged materials in an attempt to hurt Mr. Biden’s candidacy.”

Lying Leakers Advance the Narrative

The next day, another foundational Russia-collusion hoaxer, Ken Dilanian, published an “exclusive” at NBC. Citing “two people familiar with the matter,” Dilanian claimed that “federal investigators are examining whether emails allegedly describing activities by Joe Biden and his son Hunter and found on a laptop at a Delaware repair shop are linked to a foreign intelligence operation.” Dilanian also quoted Bates, who again focused on Giuliani and his alleged connection to Russia.

The Washington Post also embraced the narrative on Oct. 15, reporting, “U.S. intelligence agencies warned the White House last year that President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence.” Based on “four former officials,” The Washington Post reported that Giuliani had interacted with people tied to Russian intel.

More Lies Leaked to USA Today 

This brings us to USA Today’s Oct. 16, 2020, article, “FBI Probing Whether Emails in New York Post Story About Hunter Biden Are Tied to Russian Disinformation.”

“Federal authorities are investigating whether a Russian influence operation was behind the disclosure of emails purporting to document the Ukrainian and Chinese business dealings of Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic nominee Joe Biden,” USA Today opened its article, citing “a person briefed on the matter” and immediately bringing up Giuliani. 

According to USA Today, that person “confirmed the FBI’s involvement but did not elaborate on the scope of the bureau’s review.”

The next day, Oct. 17, USA Today followed up with the article, “A Tabloid Got a Trove of Data on Hunter Biden from Rudy Giuliani. Now, the FBI is Probing a Possible Disinformation Campaign.”

It began by saying the New York Post portrayed the laptop contents as a “smoking gun.” “Enter the FBI,” USA Today interjected, reporting that “federal authorities” are investigating whether the laptop is “disinformation pushed by Russia” and claiming there are many questions about the laptop data’s authenticity.

“Experts say the story has many hallmarks of a disinformation campaign,” it continued, using language strikingly similar to what the former intel officials would use days later.

Blinken Uses Reporting to Prod Morell

It is unclear which of the two USA Today pieces Blinken forwarded to Morell because both articles included the FBI investigation claims. It seems likely, however, that Blinken sent Morrel the second article because USA Today’s Oct. 17 coverage included a quote from supposed “experts” who said the New York Post “story has many hallmarks of a disinformation campaign.” 

That language tracked near-perfectly the wording used by the 51 former intelligence officials in their infamous Oct. 19 statement, which claimed the laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” 

That’s Not All

Morell’s contact with Blinken reportedly went beyond the phone call and email. According to CNN, following his conversation with Blinken, “Morell had conversations with other former intelligence community officials, which is what led to the letter,” and then Morell “circled back to the Biden campaign to let them know that the letter efforts were underway.” 

In testimony to House oversight investigators, Morell told how Biden’s campaign helped strategize releasing the statement, according to a letter Reps. Jim Jordan and Michael Turner sent to Blinken last week. Specifically, “Morell testified that he sent an email telling Nick Shapiro, former Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to the Director of the CIA John Brennan, that the Biden campaign wanted the statement to go to a particular reporter at the Washington Post first and that he should send the statement to the campaign when he sent the letter to the reporter.” Shapiro was another signatory of the statement.

Politico, however, eventually first broke the story and published the statement, under the headline “Hunter Biden Story is Russian Disinfo, Dozens of Former Intel Officials Say.”

Mission Accomplished 

In his testimony to House investigators, Morell “explained that one of his two goals in releasing the statement was to help then-Vice President Biden in the debate and to assist him in winning the election,” Jordan and Turner wrote. In fact, according to attorney Mark Zaid, who represents several of the signatories, “when the draft [statement] was sent out to people to sign, the cover email made clear that it was an effort to help the Biden campaign.”

Both parts of the ploy worked. When the final presidential debate arrived on Oct. 22, 2020, and then-President Trump confronted Biden with the details revealed in Hunter’s “laptop from hell,” Biden responded by telling the American public:

There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant. They have said that this has all the … five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him and his good friend, Rudy Giuliani.

Biden Campaign Thanks Morell for the Assist

Morell testified that after the debate he received a call from Jeremy Bash, who was one of the 51 signatories of the statement. Bash asked Morell if he had a minute to talk to Steve Ricchetti, head of the Biden campaign. Bash testified that he said “yes,” Bash got Ricchetti on the line, and the Biden campaign representative thanked Morell “for putting the statement out.” 

More Than Dirty Politics

Morell’s testimony revealed Blinken and the Biden campaign’s role in prompting the bunk statement from the former intel officials. But the contemporaneous media reporting exposes a larger scandal: Representatives of our government helped promote that narrative by falsely telling media outlets the FBI was investigating whether the Hunter Biden laptop was part of a Russian-disinformation campaign. 

The FBI’s role in assisting the Biden campaign’s plot transforms this case from one about dirty politics to a scandal involving government interference in the 2020 election. Accordingly, the House oversight committees need to determine which members of the FBI or intelligence agencies were responsible for the false media leak and whether anyone working on behalf of the Biden campaign collaborated with those government actors.

The committees thus need to gather evidence and question not merely Blinken, but every signatory of the statement, especially Bash; members of the Biden campaign, such as Bates and Ricchetti; and Biden advisers, including Carpenter. 

While Blinken provides an entry point to unraveling the Russian-disinformation hoax, there is much more to learn.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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8 Joe Biden Scandals Inside Hunter Biden’s MacBook That Corporate Media Just Admitted Is Legit


Reported BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND MARCH 22, 2022

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/22/8-joe-biden-scandals-inside-hunter-bidens-macbook-that-corporate-media-just-admitted-is-legit/

Biden speaking to reporters

Last week, The New York Times quietly acknowledged that the emails recovered from the MacBook Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer store were authentic. The admission came nearly a year-and-a-half late, after the corrupt media — legacy and social — buried the scandal the New York Post broke just weeks before the November election.

Merely admitting the laptop is legitimate is not enough. Rather, by concurring in the authenticity of the laptop and the emails, the supposed standard-bearers of journalism have also implicitly acknowledged the validity of the scandals spawn by the porn-filled MacBook. And notwithstanding the salacious source of the documentary evidence of the scandals, the scandals are not about Hunter Biden: They are about now-President Biden.

Here are the eight Joe Biden scandals deserving further coverage.

1. Pay-to-Play in Ukraine

The most obvious scandal bared by the emails and text messages contained on Hunter’s laptop concerns the influence profiteering Joe Biden apparently participated in during his eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president, with Ukraine featuring heavily in the pay-to-play scheme.

The New York Times, in its likely “get ahead of the story,” coverage from last week, touched on the Ukrainian angle by noting Hunter’s connection to Burisma and then quoting emails recovered from the laptop indicating the younger Biden leveraged his dad’s position — then as vice president. But the Times’ surface coverage of the Burisma scandal doesn’t nearly suffice.

Surface it was: The Times made no mention of Hunter’s appointment to Burisma Holdings Board of Directors at a reported salary of $50,000 per month during his dad’s time as vice president. Hunter Biden had no experience in energy. So, a deep-dive on the entire Biden-Burisma connection is a first step.

2. China Gets in the Game

Ukraine is but a patch on the influence-peddling undertaken by Hunter on behalf of “the big guy,” as the younger Biden referred to his dad. China also played a large role in the family enterprise, as demonstrated by, again, passing coverage in November 2021. Then, the Times reported, in brief, that Hunter Biden’s joint global equity firm, the Bohai Harvest Equity Investment Fund, had helped coordinate the purchase by a Chinese mining company of the world’s largest cobalt source in the Congo.

That deal gave China control over a huge chunk of the world’s known cobalt supplies — an ingredient necessary to make electric car batteries. And the role of Hunter Biden’s company, Bohai, in the transaction again connects directly to Joe Biden, as Hunter reportedly launched that new joint enterprise with Chinese business partners less than two weeks after he traveled to China on Air Force Two with his then-vice president father.

In exploring this scandal, the press needs to push beyond the emails recovered from Hunter’s abandoned laptop, and do what Tucker Carlson did when the pay-to-play scandal first surfaced: talk to Hunter’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski. Bobulinski provides further proof that this scandal reaches the top of the Biden family.

3. Moscow, Kazakhstan, and More

While Ukraine and China likely hold the most significant revelations, once those threads are pulled, investigators should move on to Moscow, which according to a Senate report, holds another possible scandal. That report documents that Hunter also received a combined $3.5 million from the wife of the former Moscow mayor, a Kazakhstan investor, and several other individuals. After all, there is no reason to think that a person willing to let his son sell access to the vice president of the United States would close the money train to just a few countries.

4. Ukraine’s Firing of the Prosecutor Investigating Burisma

With the elite media now deigning coverage of Hunter’s laptop appropriate, the public knows the Burisma scandal was real and threatened to be spectacularly devastating to the elder Biden. That makes questions concerning then-Vice President Joe Biden’s demands that Ukraine fire the state prosecutor who was reportedly investigating Burisma ripe to revisit.

That prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was fired, according to statements Joe Biden made during a 2018 event, after Biden threatened to withhold a billion-dollar loan guarantee if the Ukrainian government refused to ax Shokin. A video of the event captured Biden recounting the event:

I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours.’ If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a b-tch. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.

While the Obama administration attempted to spin Biden’s push for the firing of Shokin, by claiming the international community had demanded Ukraine terminate the state prosecutor, a State Department official contradicted that claim during congressional testimony. George Kent, who worked on issues related to Ukraine at the State Department, reportedly told lawmakers it was the Obama administration that “spearheaded the efforts to have Shokin removed from his position as the top federal prosecutor in Ukraine.”

Biden needs to answer questions anew over his threats to withhold money from Ukraine unless the country removed the state prosecutor responsible for investigating Burisma. Democrats have impeached a president for less.

5. Obama-Biden Administration Ignoring Conflicts of Interest

Biden also needs to answer questions about his decision to ignore the clear conflicts of interest involved with him negotiating with the same countries Hunter was shaking down. Of course, since “the big guy” was in on the scam, bowing out over conflicts of interest is the lesser of the evils, but it is still worth investigating to assess how Biden handled the concerns raised by the Obama administration’s State Department.

Here, the testimony of the State Department official charged with issues related to Ukraine again proves significant. Kent told lawmakers that after learning Hunter sat on the board of Burisma, he raised concerns with the vice president’s office about the relationship.

“I raised my concerns that I had heard that Hunter Biden was on the board of a company owned by somebody that the U.S. Government had spent money trying to get tens of millions of dollars back and that could create the perception of a conflict of interest,” Kent testified before House members in October of 2019. “The message that I recall hearing back was that the vice president’s son Beau was dying of cancer and that there was no further bandwidth to deal with family-related issues at that time … That was the end of that conversation.”

The question for now-President Biden, then, is whether anyone in his office raised concerns about the clear conflicts-of-interest with him personally, and if so, why did Biden ignore the problem?  

6. The Intelligence Community’s Briefing of Biden

Another scandal reaching President Biden concerns his interactions with the intelligence community after the FBI, and presumably the CIA and other such agencies, learned in December of 2019, that Hunter Biden believed Russians had stolen Hunter’s laptop, rendering the Bidens susceptible to blackmail.

Here, it is important to understand that there are two separate Hunter Biden laptops at issue. The most-discussed laptop was actually the second laptop. That laptop was the one Hunter had abandoned at the Delaware repair shop. Then, after the repair shop owner discovered concerning material on the MacBook, the store owner handed it to the FBI in December of 2019. The owner of the repair shop, however, had first made a copy of the hard drive, which resulted in The New York Post’s coverage in October 2020.

But there was another laptop — one Hunter believed Russians had stolen from him when he was binging on drugs with prostitutes in the summer of 2018 in Las Vegas. While the public did not learn about the existence of this earlier laptop until August of 2021, the FBI knew about it as early as December 2019, when they took possession of the second laptop Hunter had left at the repair store.

Among other material contained on the second laptop was a video of Biden recounting the circumstances of his first laptop disappearing with some Russians. Significantly, on that video Hunter Biden said his first laptop contained a ton of material leaving him susceptible to blackmail, since his father was “running for president” and Hunter talked “about it all the time.”

It is inconceivable that the FBI and the intelligence communities did not brief Biden on this discovery and the risk of blackmail, given that former FBI Director James Comey briefed Trump on the fake Steele dossier. On second thought, that is the initial question reporters should ask the president: “Did the FBI brief you, Mr. President, on the fact that Hunter believed Russians had stolen a laptop containing compromising information?”

From there, an inquiring press should investigate to ensure that Joe Biden did not direct the intelligence community to bury this national security risk to protect himself or his son.

7. Possible Collusion to Interfere in the 2020 Election

An honest press should also investigate whether now-President Biden or anyone connected to his then-presidential campaign pressured reporters, media outlets, or companies such as Twitter and Facebook to censor the Hunter Biden story. And what about the “fifty former intelligence officials” who publicly declared the laptop resembled a Russian disinformation campaign—something clearly untrue? Did Biden or his campaign coordinate with those individuals, several of whom had endorsed the Democratic candidate, in the release of the letter?

Given that polls show that 17 percent of Joe Biden voters would not have voted for him in 2020, if they had known about the Biden family scandals, the collective burying of the laptop scandal represents the most significant interference in elections ever seen in our country. So, “Did Biden or his campaign have anything to do with the decision to kill the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter’s MacBook?” And “What about the ‘fifty former intelligence officials?’”

From there the follow-ups flow quickly: “Who was involved in the push to silence the story and who were the executives or ‘journalists’ who bowed to the demands?” “Who coordinated with the intelligence officials?” “Were any threats or promises made?” “What were they?” “What did Joe Biden know?” “What about other Democrats and the Democratic National Committee?”

8. Joe Biden Is a ‘Lying Dog-Faced Pony Soldier’

The final Joe Biden scandal the press should push President Biden to answer concerns his lies to the American public. While there are too many to count, two merit further questioning.

First, the media should demand Biden answer for lying to the country when he seethed, “I have never discussed, with my son or my brother or with anyone else, anything having to do with their businesses. Period.” The evidence overwhelmingly shows that Biden not only knew of the family business deals but was part of them.

The second bold-faced fabrication from Biden came during his pre-election debate with Trump, when Trump raised “the laptop from hell.” When Trump asked Biden if he was saying the “laptop is now another Russia, Russia, Russia hoax?” the then-Democratic candidate replied, “That’s exactly what [I] was told.”

Unlikely. Biden also countered with this doozy, which again raises the question of whether Biden had a role in the intelligence officials’ statement:

There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant. They have said that this has all the … five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him and his good friend, Rudy Giuliani.

We can now add The New York Times to Giuliani. It remains to be seen, though, whether the Old Grey Lady and the other legacy outlets will report on the further scandals the laptop revealed—the ones that reach the president of the United States.

Margot Cleveland is a senior contributor to The Federalist. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Biden Falsely Claims Intel Community Has Cleared His Family Of Wrongdoing


OCTOBER 21, 2020 By 

Biden Falsely Claims Intel Community Has Cleared His Family Of Wrongdoing

Without any evidence, Democratic Nominee Joe Biden claimed that the “vast majority” of the intelligence community agrees there is “no basis at all” for the allegations of corruption against him and his son Hunter Biden.

“And, you know, and all and the vast majority of the intelligence people have come out and said, there’s no basis at all,” Biden claimed.

Despite his baseless claims, the intelligence community has weighed in on the potentially incriminating evidence presented by the New York Post and others who obtained information from a laptop hard drive reportedly belonging to Hunter Biden.

On Tuesday, the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) agreed with Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe Tuesday that the information released about Biden and his son Hunter is not a Russian disinformation campaign.

“Let me be clear,” Ratcliffe said on Fox Business, debunking Rep. Adam Schiff’s baseless claims of foreign election interference. “The intelligence community doesn’t believe that because there is no intelligence that supports that.”

The FBI is also in possession of the laptop.

Despite these claims, Biden continued to criticize the spread of this damning evidence, calling it a “last-ditch effort in this desperate campaign to smear me and my family.”

“This is the same garbage [as] Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s henchmen,” Biden said.

Biden’s comments come after Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, released a statement “on Homeland Security letterhead” claiming that Hunter and the Biden family were profiting from “the Biden name.”

A Senate report released in late September outlined “a long list of the Biden family’s conflicts of interest conducting shady overseas business activity with foreign adversaries while serving at the upper echelons of government, raising significant national security concerns with potentially criminal conduct and threats of extortion.”

Johnson reiterated his position on the issue to Sean Hannity on Fox News Monday night, expressing his concern that the mainstream media was not covering the scandal properly.

“Hunter Biden, together with other Biden family members, profited off the Biden name. That’s what’s happening here,” he said. “What we revealed in our 87-page report is a vast web of connections with Chinese nationals, with people all over the world. Again, trading on the Biden name.”

“But it’s these business dealings – you know, our report raises far more questions than it actually answered – but it raises so my troubling issues that the mainstream media is simply not looking at,” Johnson added. “They are suppressing the information, which is a scandal in and of itself.”

In response, Biden said that “Ron should be ashamed of himself” and referred to GOP outsider Sen. Mitt Romney’s denial of these claims. Romney has historically opposed his Republican colleagues on multiple contentious issues including endorsing the Democrats’ campaign to attempt to impeach Trump.

“Even the man who served with him on that committee, a former nominee for the Republican Party, said there’s no basis to this,” Biden said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

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HORRIBLE CNN Interview For Obama


Authored By Kevin Jackson |

It’s only a matter of time before AG Bill Barr and newly appointed investigator John Durham get to this bit of information.

In an interview with CNN on July 22 of last year, crooked former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper inadvertently spilled the beans on Obama:

Transcript:

CLAPPER: “If it weren’t for President Obama we might not have done the intelligence community assessment that we did that set up a whole sequence of events which are still unfolding today, notably Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation. President Obama is responsible for that. It was he who tasked us to do that intelligence community assessment in the first place.”

Clapper is on record saying that Obama gave the order to begin the investigation. An investigation to which Obama knew the outcome. The “Intelligence Community assessment” mentioned by Clapper involved using the “unverified and salacious” Steele dossier. Note that it was disgraced former FBI director James Comey who described the dossier as such. Moreover, we now know that the dossier is worse than unverified, as it is a complete work of fiction compiled from Russian disinformation source by British agent Christopher Steele and financed by the Clinton campaign.

What of the Mueller Report?

How could Special Counsel Robert Mueller have ignored this revelation? Given this readily available information, Mueller’s team should have at least interviewed Obama. One would think they would want to understand a bit more about his role in authorizing the “assessment”. What prompted his decision, and when did he see it going south.

Also, consider what Obama said of a Russian threat in 2016:

Transcript:

I’ve never seen in my lifetime or in modern political history, any presidential candidate trying to discredit the elections and the election process before even votes have taken place. It’s unprecedented. It happens to be based on no facts.

Every expert regardless of political party regardless of ideology, conservative or liberal who’s ever examined these issues in a serious way would tell you that instances of significant voter fraud are not to be found. That,

Keep in mind elections are run by state and local officials which means that, uh,  there are places like Florida whose Republican appointees are going to be running or monitoring these election sites, the notion that if Mr. Trump loses Florida it’s those because of those people you to have to watch out for. That’s both irresponsible, and by the way doesn’t really show the kind of leadership and toughness you want out of a president. You start whining before the game’s even over. If whenever things are going badly for you, and you lose you start blaming someone else, then you don’t have what it takes to be in this job.

But the larger point I want to emphasize here is there is no serious person out there who would suggest that you could, you could even rig America’s elections. In part because they’re so decentralized and the numbers of votes involved. There’s no evidence that’s happened in the past, or that there are instances where that will happen this time. So I would advise Mr. Trump to stop whining and go make his case to get votes.

Interesting press conference given all that we’ve learned about “Russian collusion”.

I’m no investigator, but I’d like to know when Obama decided to take Trump seriously about cheating? I suspect it was on November 9, 2016.

What about the timing of Obama’s “whining”? In this presser he acknowledges the “Russian collusion” theory he previously denied had any possibility of happening?

To add to the new cover story, Obama expelled Russian diplomats:


Obama his minions hoped these efforts would form the basis of the coup against by this time, President-elect Trump. Meanwhile, they continued to monitor Trump and his team. Obama and team plotted to set people up in the Trump administration. And it all failed.

Now Clapper’s words haunt Obama and others in the administration. John Durham will build a pro-America team determined to get to the truth. And you can bet as I’ve written already, all roads lead back to Obama.

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